Blood Creek (2009)

A Joel Schumacher helmed horror flick starring Michael Fassbender as a deranged, occult obsessed Nazi zombie vampire, hunted by Lincoln Burrows from Prison Break. Sounds like a flick from an alternate dimension that doesn't exist, right? Well it's out there, tough to find as it was somehow buried around it's 2009 release, and relegated to a relic before it was even a decade old. Shame, because it's a ton of warped, bloody fun. Officially titled 'Blood Creek' on iTunes, it can also be found as 'Town Creek' or simply 'Runes' elsewhere, but like they say, a rose by any other name. Fassbender is all kinds of scary in a black and white prologue as a Nazi occult agent who shows up at a rural American farm to study ancient Nordic runes which may hold the key to resurrection of the dead. His chilling work initially is nothing compared to the balls-out, gory makeup covered incarnation he gets to prance around in later though. In present day, two brothers race into the foggy backwaters to stamp out this evil, and they're played by an intense Dominic Purcell, as well as Superman himself, Henry Cavill. Not a whole lot of time is spent on character development for all involved, the film choosing instead to jump headlong into a notably gory free for all, banding together with the poor German family who has had to deal with this psycho for almost a generation on their farm. At a crisp ninety minutes, there ain't much time for anything but action and gore, with a few scarcely scattered, breathless moments of exposition that were already made clear in that prologue, the one interlude of the film that isn't soaked in adrenaline. Hats off to Fassbender under all that chatty, gooey makeup, his physicality is really menacing, and who else gets to play a Nazi vampire zombie who pounds a metal stake into his own forehead to make room for an emerging third eye? Truly a villain for the ages, had the film been allowed to gain any notoriety. And what other film can boast a sequence in which Purcell eagerly blasts zombified, rabid horses with a shotgun, chunks flying all over the barn? Such are the levels of disturbed imagination on parade. Poor Schumacher though, really. This would've been his first good film in awhile back then, and the studio goes in for the kill on every single marketing front, not even giving it decent room to breathe on DVD. At least it's still floating about on iTunes, where any horror fan would be rewarded with a rental.

I do love a good horror film, which is a shame, seeing as there's so few about. Nowadays, I judge a film with how long it can hold my attention before I start logging onto the net and only half-watching.Blood Creek actually held my attention until the end. Not that I'm saying it's a masterpiece, but it seemed to at least hold a shred of originally in its matrix.There is some bad though - lack of character development, rushed beginning (normally you have to wait ages to get into the story, but it seemed that the viewer got thrown in there pretty quick) and jerky/dark fight scenes where you can't tell who's who.However, I felt it was slightly original and you didn't quite know where it was going. It's about a man who's haunted by the loss of his brother (who disappeared during a fishing trip). The brother returns late one night and they embark on a quest for revenge that takes them up against those most dastardly of villains - Nazis (and supernatural ones at that - and, let me tell you, they're the worst kind!).The gore was good (you may have to squint a bit to ignore the slightly bad 'horse on fire' scene), but, apart from that, it has enough twists and turns to hopefully keep you interested to the end.

I've almost always loved Joel Schumacher as a director, which is why it was so disappointing watching this film and finding out it was his! Just watch it if you are interested in 90 minutes of senselessness, gore and poorly mixed horror with Nazi's history. What baffles me the most is the high profile cast, something really unusual in films like this. Shortly, it is the story of two brothers: one convinces the other to follow him in a revenge mission against a family who owns a farm, just to realize they got involved in something bigger than them, something related to supernatural forces that go back to 1936, when some Nazis were sent to America on a project to gain immortality.Sometimes I really don't get the point of a film: this is one of those times!

Who knew Joel Schumacher had a horror movie in him? Let alone a good one? Blood Creek takes the Nazi fascination with the occult and uses it as the springboard to an exciting, suspenseful scarefest. The absolutely brilliant cast--including Michael Fassbender, Dominic Purcell, and Henry Cavill--does a stalwart job all round, and where some other directors and their performers would have allowed a picture like Blood Creek to succumb to low camp, everyone involved with the film plays it razor straight. The atmosphere is dark and malevolent, and the limited setting--primarily an isolated farm somewhere in West Virginia--used to great effect. This is a gory film, and while some of the on screen mayhem should have probably been left to the imagination, the copious bloodletting is realistic and certainly holds viewer attention. The only reason this isn't a minor classic is because of the numerous plot holes--lots of things happen that even within the context of the very bizarre plot don't make a lot of sense, and other plot threads are left frustratingly unexplained. Otherwise, if you can take the graphic carnage in stride, this is a superior horror film that would see several of its stars go on to bigger and better things.